It took nine months, but regime change has finally been achieved.
Nine months after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mossad director David Barnea persuaded US President Donald Trump that regime change in Iran was possible, it has happened — just not in Tehran.
Instead, the political upheaval has taken place in Texas, Michigan, Kansas, Georgia, Florida and the US Congress.
The war on Iran has become the defining mistake of Trump's second presidential term and Netanyahu's final term in office. But Iran is far from their only political nemesis.
For Trump, who knew little about Iran, the war was more than a gamble that went wrong. The fact that it was largely Netanyahu's idea makes the failure even more damaging for a president who built his political movement around the promise of "America First". Iran was precisely the kind of foreign war Trump had campaigned against.
For Netanyahu, whose political career has been shaped by his determination to confront the Islamic Republic, the failure carries a different significance.
It was a classic case of military and intelligence overreach. Netanyahu and Mossad believed they could do to an entire country what they thought they had accomplished against Hamas and Hezbollah. They dramatically underestimated the Islamic Republic's capacity to resist.
Yet the war on Iran, and the economic turmoil it unleashed across both sides of the Gulf and beyond — including record fuel prices — were not the sole causes of the political earthquake that has shaken the United States.
The Democrats had to collapse first to make Trump's return to the White House possible.
They began by allowing former President Joe Biden to seek a second term, then compounded the mistake by choosing his vice president, Kamala Harris, to replace him after he withdrew from the race.
Had Harris won in 2024, it is difficult to imagine any Democrat, regardless of ideological persuasion, openly advocating an end to military aid to Israel.
Biden and Harris had overseen, supported and armed the early and bloodiest stages of Israel's assault on Gaza, a policy from which the Democratic Party may never fully recover.
Gaza became the Democratic Party's nemesis, just as it had become one for Britain's Labour Party under Keir Starmer.
It was Gaza that transformed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) from an organisation that aspiring US politicians once feared confronting into a political liability. The issue has now become a nemesis for the Republican Party and the Trump family as well.
The destruction in Gaza, documented in real time through images of atrocities, including footage filmed by those carrying them out, became one of the defining political issues of the era.
Those images overwhelmed the language used to justify or obscure what was happening. They stood in stark contrast to Washington's insistence that Israel was merely "defending itself" and galvanised Democratic voters, alongside millions of progressives around the world who took to the streets in protest.
Consider the political journey of one of Tuesday night's most notable winners, US senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed.
Sayed began his campaign as a candidate onto whom almost anyone could project their political expectations. Trump and his Republican rival, Mike Rogers, accused him of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.
Trump went as far as declaring that Sayed was "a Muslim Brotherhood guy, 100 percent", a claim that was repeated widely in the US media despite lacking evidence.
Just a week before the election, former House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi appeared on a podcast hosted by Donny Deutsch, who accused Sayed of making "concerning" remarks about the existence of a Jewish state and described them as antisemitic.
Pelosi went further, saying: "No, it's more than concerning. It's wrong. It's wrong, and it isn't a reflection of the Democrats in the Congress of the United States."
"This new person in Michigan, we'll see if he gets elected to the Congress," she added.
That "new person" has now become a reflection of the changing political landscape in Congress. His victory in Michigan has become one of the most significant electoral challenges to established US policy on Israel.
Sayed represents a political direction that figures such as Pelosi have struggled to accommodate. The contrast between the two reflects the scale of change that Gaza has brought to American politics.
AIPAC spent $30 million trying to defeat Sayed in the primaries and another $9 million supporting the pro-Israel candidate, Rogers, in the midterms. Representative Haley Stevens, whom Sayed defeated in the primaries, made a dramatic political switch just days before the election, moving to the Republican camp.
That move further complicated the political landscape for those who had sought to discourage Democrats from supporting Sayed. Stevens was condemned by some of the same voters who had been warned against backing him.
The Jerusalem Post was right to conclude that the Michigan election had serious implications for US support for Israel.
"One of the clearest takeaways from the election campaign is the political price the war with Iran has exacted on the Republican Party," its analysis said, referring to the conflict Israel pushed the US into on 28 February.
"The expansion of the camp critical of Israel, and its growing access to positions of influence, represents a shift that Israel cannot afford to ignore," it added.
Of course, the United States is still a long way from having a post-Zionist Democratic Party, let alone a Congress prepared to vote to end military aid to Israel.
The limits of what can be expected from the new generation of lawmakers are already apparent in the position of Congressman Ro Khanna, whose vehicle was surrounded by armed settlers during his last visit to the occupied West Bank.
Khanna has pushed for official US recognition of a Palestinian state, opposed unconditional military aid to Israel and advocated a permanent ceasefire and non-violent resistance. Yet he continues to support Zionism and Israel's "right to exist".
"I believe that Zionism is self-determination of the Jewish people, and the right for Israel to exist. And I support that. What I don't believe is if it means Greater Israel," Khanna said last year, adding that he supported a "two-state solution".
In other words, neither Khanna nor the other emerging figures in the Democratic Party are likely to challenge the foundations of US policy towards Israel to the extent of ending the occupation or dismantling apartheid.
Khanna's faith in the possibility of a two-state solution also sits uneasily alongside the reality he encountered during his visit to the West Bank and the positions of Israeli political parties. Both pro- and anti-Netanyahu parties have, in different ways, contributed to the political consensus that has effectively ruled out a Palestinian state.
But there is an important distinction to be made between the politicians entering Congress and the movement that helped propel them there.
Who would have imagined three years ago that American public opinion could shift this far?
The conflict is far from over, and neither is the movement for Palestinian self-determination. Its demands will not disappear simply because a new generation of politicians has entered Congress.
A return to the status quo that existed before 7 October 2023 will not be enough. More food and humanitarian supplies entering Gaza while the siege remains in place, or a reduction in settler violence in the occupied West Bank while settlements continue to expand, will not satisfy a movement demanding fundamental change.
The political momentum is still building, and it is unlikely to stop here.
Throughout its history, Israel has depended as much on liberal Zionist support from the centre-left as it has on backing from the neoliberal right. Both political foundations are now becoming increasingly unstable.
For US Republicans, the lessons of the midterm defeat are even more immediate. The Democratic gains were driven by soaring living costs, tariffs and the instability created by US-led wars abroad.
But behind much of that instability lies Trump's relationship with two of his closest allies: Russian President Vladimir Putin and Netanyahu.
MAGA supporters who have already broken with Trump, including broadcaster Tucker Carlson, and those who have yet to openly declare their positions, such as Carlson's friend and Vice President JD Vance, may feel emboldened by the election results.
Trump will continue to insist that decisions about America's domestic and foreign policy belong to him alone. He may wield his veto power and encourage another government shutdown.
But history has shown that there are forces Trump cannot easily ignore. He fears the bond market and Wall Street's judgement. He also fears the political battle over his succession.
The time when he could portray himself as a victim of the Democratic establishment has long passed. He is now one of the most powerful figures in the political system he once claimed to oppose — a patriarch whose autumn may already have arrived.
Whatever Trump says about his name not being on the ballot, the record shows that he campaigned at 30 rallies for Republican candidates who went on to lose. That is hardly a convincing record for a populist president.
Beyond Washington, the midterm results will inevitably be interpreted as a referendum on Trump's second term, regardless of whether he continues to exercise presidential power as a weakened political figure.
Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has said he expects Washington to continue the war in pursuit of Tehran's "unconditional surrender".
Perhaps it will. But resuming air strikes after such an electoral setback would be even more politically damaging than it was before. Vance himself has described the Republican losses as a direct consequence of the war with Iran.
Trump is now a declining political force. As his influence weakens, those outside his closest circle may become increasingly reluctant to answer his calls or tie their political fortunes to his decisions.
The Trump family will also face much closer financial scrutiny from the new Congress.
Representative Robert Garcia, who is expected to chair the House Oversight Committee, was not joking when he warned Trump to "lawyer up".
Members of the Trump family have repeatedly benefited financially from political crises and impending policy decisions, including tariff announcements. In almost any other political environment, such dealings would invite serious questions about insider trading. In Trump's White House, they have increasingly become business as usual.
The financial activities of Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller are also likely to attract greater scrutiny.
Of particular interest to the House Oversight Committee will be the Trump family's lucrative business relationships with foreign investors and government-linked figures, particularly in the United Arab Emirates.
In January 2025, four days before Trump's inauguration, UAE-backed investors paid $500 million for a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency company co-founded by Trump's sons, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump.
The investment was backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE's national security adviser and brother of the country's president.
The Wall Street Journal reported that $187 million of the initial payment went to companies linked to the Trump family, while another $31 million went to companies associated with Steve Witkoff, Trump's Middle East envoy and a co-founder of the venture.
Following the money could lead investigators to examine the financial relationships between the Trump family and governments across the Gulf.
That scrutiny should also extend to the Board of Peace, which should now, by rights, be scrapped and replaced by an international structure under the United Nations.
If Netanyahu's camp in Israel is worried about the direction of US politics, Gulf leaders have equally good reason to be concerned.
Iranian drones and missiles have punctured the security bubble that allowed small but enormously wealthy Gulf states to believe they were insulated from the instability surrounding them.
The US midterm results have delivered a political shock of their own. They have reinforced the message that Gulf states may have squandered considerable resources by investing so heavily in Trump.
It is impossible to know what Trump might have done had those governments refused to invest in him. Would he have turned against the vulnerable Turkish economy if President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had not invested so much political capital in maintaining relations with him? We may never know.
But that moment has passed.
For their own security, Middle Eastern powers must now look towards regional alliances and mutual defence arrangements as the basis for their future.
UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman both built their national strategies around Trump. That may prove to be one of the worst strategic investments either leader has made.
Almost everyone sought to accommodate Trump. Last year, the Doha Forum in Qatar effectively turned itself into a Trump-themed event ahead of the main attack on Iran. His sons became the stars of the gathering, while American delegates filled its halls. It was an unmistakable indication of the direction in which Qatar was moving.
Europe was no different. The question now is whether European governments will finally stand up to Trump and establish themselves as genuine competitors to US policy, particularly over Ukraine.
Finally, the midterm results carry a clear warning for UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham's government.
The internationally connected movement for Palestine that helped drive political change in the United States is not going away. If anything, it is likely to grow stronger.
If Burnham is seen as making empty promises to Palestinians and the wider Arab world, as former US president Barack Obama did with his Cairo speech, he could face the same political fate as Starmer.
Speaking out against Israel's occupation will not be enough. Burnham will have to translate his words into action.